Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2020 New York University Hosts Post-Election Discussion 20240711

Picture of what is happening down ballot for several weeks. We have assembled a stellar team to help us navigate a couple of key questions. What happened, and why . Was there an expected gap between expectations and results . If so, what was the cause . How are the two parties, democrats and republicans, going to move forward in terms of both their program, their policies, and how they position themselves electorally. The that, let me turn microphone to my coconspirator in this endeavor, ellen toscano. Hello. I am cofounder of the inside american politics series. Hosted for 10 years by last year and this year come up by the center at nyu. We started the annual Conference Following the historic election of barack obama as president of the United States. Together to discuss the election of joe biden. An equally historic Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color. A find ourselves in transitional and dynamic moment in the transfer of power from the current president , donald trump, who has not conceded but will contest the results. Biden, widelylect accepted and acknowledged as the president elect based upon the counts of voting officials across the country. However contested, there was an historic turnout with votes still being counted. At votes hit a 50 year high 148 million votes, 62 percent of the eligible voting population. Participantsul to of these panels over the next two days. Each panelist is expert and experienced in american politics , and very busy with the ongoing drama of this historically messy transfer of power. Myore we begin, let me thank coorganizer steve mcmahon, with whom i have had the pleasure of working all of these years in the presentations of these conferences. And the bradman center, liz brown, Deputy Director of programming and outreach tom mcintyre. I would also like to thank our cosponsors in programming, its own series. Center for justice and nyu vote. Notes, wetical believe time at the end of each hopefully 15y minutes for members of the audience. Bios in theread interest of making more time for the panels. A link is in the chat. With that, i will introduce the moderator of the first panel, steve mcmahon. Longtime democratic strategists and cofounder of purple strategies, llc. You. Ank we have got a great panel today. People who have worked in politics on both the democratic and republican side. Others who have been television ofducers and, in the case betsy who is now the executive director of the women in Politics Institute at american university. We are excited to have this conversation. We are talking in this panel about what just happened. , but going to dig deep jonathan martin, one of our journalist panelist today, wrote a great piece in the new york that lookedher day at how joe biden won, with the key moments were. Maybe a good way to start this would be to go to jonathan to give us a quick summary of how you think biden won this thing, what were the pivotal moments and how the campaign took advantage of those. Thank you. Thank you guys for doing this again. Though this is a different environment than we are used to. We will make the best of 2020. Wisdom of the democrats nominating joe biden has come into focus the last week. This was a personal repudiation of Donald Trumps conduct. This was not a political statement on the Republican Party. Look no further than the difference between the republicans who were afraid to lose seats in the house, but gained seats. While President Trump loses convincingly. A decision that was critiqued by the conduct for teat by the conduct of the president , wanted somebody to bring some measure of normalcy back. At the same time, they were not calling for an expansive progressive government. We are now in a place where the democratic majority in the house has been reduced significantly. The senate will probably be 5050, or 5149 republican. That depends on what happens in january. The question now is, was joe biden the only democrat who could have beaten trump . Given how the race was in swing states, would a different democrat have been able to put together that coalition of keeping the parties base of ,acial minorities in big cities growing to the hillary advantage in the suburbs . Anybody else besides biden have done that . We will never know the answer, but biden did do it. That is a credit to him and his party. How did he do it . By being joe biden. Centrist oriented centerleft democrat whose instinct was to heal the country , cool divisions instead of inflaming them. He caught hell for it last year in the primary. Every debate night, they were coming after him, saying he was naive. How could you think you could work with republicans . He never wavered. You guys know this, campaigns that win have message consistency. If you look at his opening video in april 2019 and take it through the speech he gave saturday claiming victory, youll will see a through line of joe biden running on restoring the soul of america, america is better than donald trump, and i am going to restore congenial, less polarized place. I visa, it worked. Along the way, there were challenges. But, i think consistency was essential. Made,is an argument to be and i could make it because i wrote the story, effectively this election came to an end in march. Biden effectively ended the primary by beating Bernie Sanders soundly in michigan. Day, we all got hit in the head by covid. Thats clear that next day covid was real, the president gave a speech, tom hanks was diagnosed, nba canceled its season. That week in march was really the turning point because it became clear that the whole trump theory of the case which was, you dont like me but the economy is great and the other guys are crazy, that case came crashing down. The democrats did not terminate did not nominate Bernie Sanders, and he couldnt run on the economy anymore because the pandemic crash the economy. You can trace the election back to that week in march. Thank you. I want to call on todd. Todd is one of the best republican strategists out there. Who outperformed donald trump, i remember when we were talking after the election you said you were not sure that your candidates could actually outperformed donald trump and win. But, that is what happened. They outperformed donald trump and won. Do you think jonathans analysis is right that it was over in march . Or, given the results and how close it was, it seems like it was never over until the ballots were counted. What do you think . It did not feel like it was over in march. I think jonathan was exactly right to be calling this in fact, i made a note this was a split decision election. We talked for ages about trumps problems in the suburbs. The problem republicans had in 2018 was that there was no way for suburban voters to express their disapproval of donald they specifically, and so voted against republicans generally as a way to show their disapproval. This time around, they could vote against trump. You have, in all types of swing districts and statewide races, you have all of these suburban voters who did not like trump personally, although they did like his economic policies. At the same time, they were not ready to embrace, though it may agenda, been bidens there was a sense among suburban voters that these kinds of cultural changes that the left been talking about were to them. One of the things i think republicans did a particularly good job in terms of messaging on was keeping that conversation alive about cancel culture, defunding the police, the riots and all of that. What you ended up with was a situation where, in 2020, voters , but go vote against trump in state after state, they could turn around and vote republican. Whether it is look at maine for starters the minnesota house, the state legislature there. Pennsylvania, ryan swingieick, one of the st of all swing districts. I think biden is going to outperformed the president by 14 or 15 points. Don bacon in nebraska too. Same sort of dynamics. Is final point i will make one of the reasons why that bidenc worked both for and down ballot republican candidates is because the biden paign did a good job of every election is about a choice. From 1984,mous one are you better off today than you were four years ago . The Biden Campaign debate did a really good job of making sure that the choice that the voters were thinking about was an up or down vote on donald trump. On donald referendum trump, not a binary choice between two candidates. That to 2016 where you truly did have a choice. The entire last 10 days of the race were all about Hillary Clinton. Yearjanuary onward of this , the entire thing has been about donald trump. Up or down vote. A in that up or down vote, as democrat i am excited about mr. Joe biden, the history making that occurred with Kamala Harris. I want to talk about a couple of important subgroups the Democratic Party constituency, women and minority voters. I want to go to joel the pollster. Lets talk about some of the voters that made this possible, joel, and doug. Pollster,democratic one of the best in the world. Doug for nell was involved in dky races as a partner at sk , heavily involved at the Biden Campaign. Many Congressional Senate races as well. I would like to get from the two of you a little bit on the turnout and which demographic groups made the biggest impact, and what that portends for both parties Going Forward . Doug . Ofit is great to be a part this group. It is always fun to break down the election with so many smart folks. I appreciate you having me. I agree with almost everything folks have said so far. That a lot of the gains we saw in 2018 that the Democratic Party made in the suburbs and actually, started with Hillary Clinton in 2016, but increased in 2018. We have seen adding bang was able to build on those gains. Turnout,hen we look at numbers are still coming in. But when you look at milwaukee and philadelphia, detroit and flint, we are seeing the numbers of black voters definitely increased. About the percentage of those that went for trump, but the overall numbers have increased. That was in part due to an emphasis by the Biden Campaign to reach those voters. We also saw that among asianamerican voters. And outside groups. Naacp closely with the with turning out black voters. They had a concentrated effort on pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin and georgia. They spent early, mobilizing volunteers to transition that an actual communicate persuasion program, and then a turnout program. That started at the end of september. Those are some particularly in the suburbs a place where biden in particular needs to feel good about the campaign he ran. About have a conversation polls being off and whatever, but i think the strategy of the Biden Campaign should be looked sense applauded in the that they had a strategy to focus on three states. They did five or 10 other places, but michigan,ennsylvania and wisconsin arizona, those were four components of the campaign. Lastat where biden was the 24 hours of the campaign, pennsylvania. There were polls that showed democrats up soundly in pennsylvania, but the Biden Campaign was not taking anything for granted. They were all over pennsylvania. While there may have been indications from other polls that there were other states in play, i think there are many things i would give credit but, they did not get distracted by shiny objects. In texas did invest and ohio, but the overall strategy of their focus on those three blue states that was critical to biden winning remained from the start. They also knew they needed another one just in case one of the blue states didnt work out, so they focused on arizona and georgia. There is a lot to unpack overall, but i think the message discipline that jonathan mentioned was right on. I also think that one of the biggest strategic errors the Trump Campaign made was undermining vote by mail. Campaign the Biden Campaign ran a major vote by Mail Campaign and it made a huge difference. There was a time when republicans used to vote by mail , that is why florida in many ways runs such a sophisticated system. They have older voters and voting by mail is not something that is strange to them. That was a tactical mistake by the Trump Campaign, one that andn took advantage of potentially is the reason why he won. Joel, looking at michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. How does it look different to you since 2016 . That,hink let me take but first say overall, i often say to people we forget we are a 5050 country. Probably 4040, with 20 to consider the themselves moderate and independent. To win elections, you have to win the middle. That is true when you look at those states. Bidenational level, joe improved his performance over Hillary Clinton with independent voters by 12 points. From 42 to 54. Self identified moderate voters, biden at 64 . I think when you look at those three states, those were the blue wall. You have to win the states if you are a democrat. Was aaid years ago, it monumental blunder by the thinking we had those states locked up. You have to win the middle. Though election, even joe biden is not from the left wing of the party, donald trump is so far to the right it his extreme behavior, he is not ideological, but in his behavior he acts in a way that is alienating to voters in the middle. I have been talking about suburban voters early on. He plummeted in the early days of coronavirus. Floyd,ermath of George Donald trump plummeted with suburban voters, falling behind in a group he had won by four points and they make up half the electorate. Most polls,eted in including fox news. Which i think is the best media pulling out there. He was down 16 or 18 points. The margin was not anywhere near that big on election day. If you look at the gains biting being made with suburban voters biden made with suburban voters half of that margin is coming from the suburbs. About smartint republican campaigns, i agree say , but i would also when i say we are a 5050 country, americans do not love it when one party has all three branches of government. System is supposedly built on checks and balances, voters often make sure those checks and balances are there. I think that is a lot of what happened. I also think in terms of congressional seats, and the senate. 2018 was a big win for democrats. They picked up a huge number of seats. Checkk this was, again, a , a governor, if you will. To make sure that this does not run away too much in one direction. Those dynamics were at play. We are probably going to talk more about this being a referendum on the president. Incumbentgn were an is running, it is a referendum a referendum on the president s performance. The course of history, we have had few landslides. Electeden president s and reelected with more than 50 of the vote both times. Tohave a history going back 1900, before trump, only seven president s who sought reelection sorry five out of 19 lost. There are a lot of dynamics here structurally that could have been in play for trump, but more importantly with the events we had come of pandemic, the economy which is trumps strength falling apart. More households with somebody out of work than at any time since the great depression. He is out there saying he built the greatest economy. It was tone deaf and out of touch. I want to take a peek underneath the hood for a second on female voters. Executive director of the mayor women in politics troop, before that executive producer of meet the press. Know politics, subgroups, you watch this closely. Characterize both the turnout and performance of female voters in the suburbs and elsewhere . In particular, what role did they have in georgia . Anybody who has done Democratic Politics knows the most reliably dependable democratic voters are black women. Women in general usually make up a majority of any electorate. Could you talk to us about the role of women in turnout and what you saw . Happy to be with you guys. As you mentioned, women are the most steadfast of voters. Both outnumbering men in registration and turnout. That was certainly true this election cycle, women making up about 55 of the electorate. But, there was a lot of discussion earlier this year not only about the blue wave, but the female tsunami. Coming into the biden column. Polls showing biden up between 15 15 to 26 points among women. The they will do a postmortem and other panels. In 2016arison sake, Hillary Clinton 13 points. A lot of polls were saying it is much higher than that. What we ended up seeing from ,e preliminary exit polls trying to big caveat, make sense of it all is not completely scientific at this point, but biden winning women by 11 or 13 points, staying the same as 2016 or perhaps shrinking slightly. Gendertingly in terms of , the movement into the biden column and away from trump really came from the male vote, which trump won by 11 points in 2016 and polls show now that him getting that male vote, winning that male vote by a much smaller margin. As you mentioned in the lead up to the question as we looked further into the womens vote and examine race, we know that black women in particular supported biden at the highest rate. Trump again appeared to win among white women, maybe even doing better than he did in 2016. But the black women definitely coming into play in terms of organization and support in some of the key urban areas. You mentioned georgia, but also philadelphia, organizing, adding the vote out. We also mentioned Kamala Harris earlier. That was also specific in terms of motivating black women to turn out and we certainly saw over the last couple of days, with celebrations about, you know, Vice President elect Kamala Harris giving her speech, showing up in white, black women excited and proud. I think that was a real special moment. Todd, i want to go back to georgia for a second device can. You were involved in the race there and were paying attention to polling on a daily, certainly weekly basis, and you saw how these things were moving. Can you tell us a bit about what you were seeing . Doug, i dont know if you were involved in georgia at the same time, looking at the polling from the other side, but to the extent that you were aware of polling, can you tell us what you were seeing . We occasionally get these moments, like at the nyu conferences, to compare notes about heres what the republicans were seeing and what the democrats were seeing in the same place at the same time, so lets just see if it lines up. It is an open question, because we just dont have the data yet, to ,efinitively say in georgia that its ultimately the reason why biden, who is going to carry the state, they havent called it yet, but is the reason he carried georgia because of a massive increase in africanamerican turnout . To do with the dynamics i was talking about before that a few others have mentioned, with the suburbs turning against trump . While it is true that there were massive mobilizations of africanamerican voters, particularly in and around atlanta, there were equally massive globalizations of rural white voters. Again,s some suggestion we dont have the data yet, that those two things likely cancel each other out, by and large, and if that is the case then the won isy biden one because of the suburban vote. All you have to do is look. Data here. As of yesterday, trump in the atlanta suburbs, trump is underperforming purdue by almost a point and a half. And underperforming purdue in the exurbs by a little north of half a point. When you just look at the raw hillary narrowly won cobb county, which cobb county is 25 africanamerican. 60 white. Middle to upper middle to upper class. Was the narrow winner in 2016 and biden pretty overwhelmingly one cobb county. Cobb won cobb county. The story has yet to be written but it could be that its both a combination of the massive africanamerican turnout and trump losing support in the suburbs. But at the same time i know everyone pays a lot of attention to georgia and people talk about it inc. So close, so close, but its been heading this way for a long time. Two years ago i was involved in the brian kemp governors race which, you know, was probably the most competitive governors race in the country. O, this is not anything new the challenge for republicans is going to be that it is only going to continue trending this way. Doug, joel, i want to hear from you. Us what you and the campaigns you were involved in were seeing at the same time . Mean so if you start in 2018, i think we saw for the you could even go back to 2016, but we have seen incremental growth in terms of picking up voters in georgia since 2016. 2018 we had a couple of really important congressional wins, really close gubernatorial loss there. Close nonetheless. And there was a lot of effort after the election by people grow theey abrams to Democratic Base there and register voters. As we saw over the last couple of months, that state became increasingly one of those states that, unlike ohio, which i never thought was a place we could win this cycle, given the makeup and demographic of the state, it looked like a place democrats could do exceptionally well. The numbers i was seeing sort of showed that. For one of the projects i was working on, we made, we made a big invest big investment over the last couple of weeks on digital programs to communicate directly with those 18 to 39yearold black voters. Many of them in frequent black voters, to get them to turnout. While the numbers are still going in, you can probably have two things be true. Did well in the suburbs but also well with turning out lack voters. , you know, i think georgia became one of those places, like arizona, where i was more bullish on those two than i ever was on florida, or, for that matter, iowa or ohio. Just because of the makeup of the state, you know. We were seeing, trend wise. The campaigns made their decisions to invest their. The work that they did to mobilize there was, it made a huge difference. A lot of the outside groups that played their made a huge difference. Joel . Yeah, georgia is a state i have been looking at for a while. In 2012, 2016 in the Hillary Campaign at one point people were feeling so bullish, they wanted to do a head fake and put some money in a red state to try to get the republicans to invest their and they chose arizona. Arizona. Against i said no one in the press is going to believe that arizona was competitive in 2016. Georgia was a much more credible state at that point. I think the Biden Campaign made the right choice in playing their. The other factor is that between the last election and this one, we did some analysis of Population Trends in the country and postfinancial crisis, for the First Time Since reconstruction, africanamericans were moving more from north to south than south to north. Those were states like North Carolina, georgia, florida. Obviously virginia, if you call it a below the masondixon line state. And people say that the reason is when pete during hard economic times, people move to where they know people, where they have family and friends. Where they could get a job with a social network. To me georgia was going to be very competitive in this election and i think the Biden Campaign definitely played the right hand by investing there. Turns out arizona was a pretty good investment this time as well. Trends mattered a lot in the gains georgia have gains inot and the georgia have been younger, the millennials, things that are happening in the demographics of the state that will make it more competitive Going Forward over time. Jonathan, did you have anything you wanted to add . I spent time in georgia and arizona over the last couple of months in the campaign. It was clear they were both going to be competitive and biden was smart to make that investment in time and money. What is striking is that because of the covid, he only got to phoenix once the entire campaign. The way, this is detailed in a think, which story is the sin . This is the story that hopefully you guys will have in your sunday paper. Do you guys realize, well, you wrote the story, biden only went west of the central time zone once the entire campaign . He went once to vegas and phoenix and besides that he never left central time. Extraordinary. But he did get out there. He was in warm springs and atlanta. The numbers were there. You had a combination of nonwhite voters and suburbanites who didnt like trumps conduct and it was a math thing. It made a lot of sense. , iss striking to me, guys we knew that arizona and georgia were coming. What im curious about is why North Carolina cannot get its such a hard state for democrats to win. You know, they elect democratic governors there every four years. Services fullterm, they will have had democratic governors for 28 of 32 years and they have elected one democratic senator in this century in 2008, the year that obama carried the state. Democrats of a problem in North Carolina with federal elections. They have a hard time winning the presidency there. Even though the demographics seem to be about as good as georgia. Difference is theres less of a black cloud there than in georgia. Its about 20 of the population. [no audio] the high wire act for gop candidates who were women, separating themselves from what i would call the misogyny of donald trump and being able to run a sort of independent as republicans. Can you give us a on that . You know, todd mentioned this earlier. We did see some support coming in these down ballot races towards republicans, improving their numbers, of course, in the house and senate. The effect of that essentially is that there are even more republican women who have been elected to congress. If you run an institute on women and politics, thats a good thing because theres no way to get to that parity in representation unless you have both parties bringing women into the process. Track to having more women in congress and i think the Record Number right now is 127 and with a couple of toes left to be decided, up 132. Not a huge difference, but moving in the right trajectory. Still under a quarter total. Im back. Welcome back. I missed florence. Wait your turn, now. [laughter] the republicans, smartly after 2018, when they saw a republican women elected to congress, they really just put a lot of focus, money, resources, and effort into recruiting some good republican women candidates. Place toose women in take advantage of the electoral wind that was moving their way, you saw 13 new republican women, some in races that have yet to be decided, coming at the expense, frankly, of democratic women, incumbents that were beat. Five of them. We will have more women than ever in congress. Thats still the way to go. Jonathan, you were in the middle of a compelling point. The point i was making was that like these states are fascinating to me. Why was georgia ripe enough . Why was arizona ripe enough at the margins . North carolina, a state that you would think would be as favorable, doesnt get there for democrats. On really got to drill down these county by county votes. Looking at North Carolina, biden did better than not just hillary , but better than obama in 2012 in two of the big metro areas. But why isnt he coming closer to winning . The answer is that trump has got a hold on rural voters that not it alsointense, but draws more turnout, to. The turn out of his base is what really kept this election and those kinds of states closer. Hes giving up ground in the metros, but hes making up for it in a lot of these rural areas. Not just on the margins, but in terms of the definite turnout. Ok, im going to go to todd and then doug. To jonathans point, i was thinking a lot about this, the day after the election i was in iowa. I was there for election day and then flying home and at the time it looked very much like trump might be reelected and i was the hold that he has, the connection that he has to a big chunk of the republican base, specifically white workingclass voters. It reminded me of something i hadnt thought of in a very, very long time that im surprised i remembered at all,rom my College Economics class its something called loss aversion theory. What loss invert loss aversion theory says is that more motivated to protect they already have dan to get something new. All kinds ofen studies about this. Drilling down by like a factor of like three or four times more likely to want to protect what you already have. So, rightly or wrongly, and people can have a debate about this, but if you are a white can , in many ways your vote for trump is to protect those things that you feel you already have. To protect the kind of country you grew up in. To protect the kind of culture that that, that you have always known and loved. More a lot of these people feel that that is slipping away from them. Whether it is immigration or, you know, the idea of sort of political correctness, or just the mere fact that whites will majority will be a nonwhite country in the coming years. There are all kinds of reasons people are worried that they are going to lose that and trump speaks to that in a way that really no other candidate certainly in my lifetime has. So, the connection that they have with him is not based on economic or even based on politics. Its cultural. And its very, very powerful. To go to doug, than joel, then back to this intensity thing you mentioned. Go ahead, doug. Point,thing i want to that i want to raise, the democrats had to run their campaigns much differently than in the past. In the past them a kratz relied on voter contact methods like going door to door, doing rallies to help with Voter Registration and turnout. For most campaigns on the democratic side, we werent doing that. We werent doing a lot of direct going door to door. Definitely increased towards the end. The ralliest doing that democrats had become accustomed to. With the organizes organizing with churches, souls to the polls, that was something democrats chose not to do as much because obviously of the pandemic. I think trump and many republicans took a different approach and i wonder, this race, at the president ial level, likely from a popular vote standpoint be that close. Obviously its closer from an electoral vote standpoint. But when you look at some of these places, did that make a difference . The fact that democrats didnt do a lot of those Traditional Voter contact methods that we are used to, that democratic voters are used to . Yes, we phoned in and did virtual calls, but not as much doortodoor and it makes a huge difference. Its a lot more effective than or texting. Facetoface conversations make a difference and i just wonder in a noncovid era, if we were doing that whether some of the numbers would have actually been better for dams. Dems. I want to go some back to something that todd said and i dont disagree with most of it and i agree wholly on the loss aversion theory that ive read about as well, but one thing thats interesting, and look, trump is his own worst enemy, we all know that. Its unfathomable to me that their campaign didnt know that 60 of voters said their Economic Situation today was the same or worse than four years ago. Keep talking about building the biggest economy on earth, the greatest economy on and history, when six out of 10 voters dont feel that way is bad politics and will be disastrous at the polls. When you look at how they voted, whether they said their situation was worse or the same, those who said the same voted two to one for joe biden. Those who said worse said voted 74 to 23 for joe biden. All the rules that worked in his pate work in his favor when he blows them up, it doesnt mitigate the need to use common sense in your campaign and understand where the voters are. But hes just not a controllable or malleable candidate. Most of us as consultants would look and say to somebody, hey, you think you built the greatest economy on earth, but americans dont believe it anymore, stop saying it and most of them would listen. Thats not the case here. You know, i think whether those things work Going Forward to the advantage of democrats, we have often done well with middle and ,orkingclass voters particularly when republicans want tax cuts at the highend, which most voters dont like, giving tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. I think that one of the dynamics at work here that contributed, and one last point that we havent touched on, the plurality of voters made up their mind in the exit polls in the month of september and i really wonder how much trumps demeanor and performance at that first debate just put the nail in the coffin for a lot of middleoftheroad voters, who just said i cant take this guys behavior. If my kids acted like this, i would ground them for three weeks. I think they decided to ground donald trump after that. Yeah. Todd, i saw you raised your hand, but im going to ask you a question and if you can leave it in, thats great, because you mentioned something thats really interesting. I hope the people watching think so, but im the moderator, right . You talked about intensity and the intensity of rural voters and their commitment to and attachment to donald trump. Its a twopart question. I was always struck by the fact that ever since he got there, he has seemed more interested sorry . Ok, he seemed more interested in appealing to his base than he was ever interested in getting new people into his coalition. It doesnt seem like thats a good way to win a reelection campaign. My question is, as he went further and further into the base, it seemed like he got stronger and stronger among the base but it was a small group that wasnt growing. Its a twopart question. Number one, could any other republican in the future match that intensity among that group of people and turn them out the way he did . And do you believe the democrats match that intensity on the others with an intensity to get rid of donald trump that was equal to or greater . And i want to ask jonathan to comment on that as well, because jonathan you interview a lot of these folks and obviously you will have a perspective as well. Todd . The second one first. If you subscribe to the applicability of loss aversion behavior, ther answer would be no. Thats people who are voting in order to gain something they are not ever have going to be as motivated as rightly ors who are, wrongly, perceiving that they are voting to protect something that is at risk. If, if that theory holds true, it would certainly explain why no matter how motivated people were to either get rid of trump, no matter how motivated the vote inive base was, to favor of the kind of country that they wanted, it was never going to be a as motivating as those who were voting to protect something they already had. As the coalition that trump was able to put together, i would love to be able to say yes, that you know, other republicans can match that coalition, but im not sure that thats the case. Look at insofar as you those candidates who ran in 2015. I dont think that any of them, and i worked very proudly for marco rubio, but i dont think we would have been able to build the kind of white workingclass. Oalition that trump did and certainly we would not have had the intensity that trump has. Ok, jonathan and then betsy. I thought you had your hand raised. I think that trump himself is going to be the one that keeps this going. And i the one to keep this going. Can it bemuch transferred . Theouldnt transform from midterms the way that obama could. If we are being candid, he couldnt transfer in florida last week either. I they that these president s have a unique hold on their voters. He can passl that it on. There is a conversation going on at the white house not because republicans are trying to incentivize Good Behavior now by saying, you can get a reward leader if you are good now, and the board is you can run against the president in 2024 if you do not totally mess this up now. That is true how much of that is just trying to keep him from Going Nuclear in the next couple weeks . How interested is he in running . 2024, hisnt run in kids will be interested in running. They are not going away. I think that democrats and moderate republicans have deluded themselves thinking that defeating him you will end they are in this for the long run and they will be a huge part of the party. Whether he runs again in 2024 or not, my guess is he will keep the door open for a very long time. It will make it difficult, if not impossible, for every republican to start like, hypothetically speaking, marco rubio or anyone. It would make it hard to do. 20092011 sarah palin experience is what i compare it to. If you can think back a decade there was so much hype around sarah palin, what is she going to do . S quith the governorship in the summer ofe 2009, what is she going to do, is she going to iowa . She is endorsing the South Carolina governor. Oh, i mean, there was a time she was a big deal in the party. I think were going to go through that. Will he run again in 2024 . Of course, he is the consummate showman. Say, i why what he ever am good them i will go play golf in florida. Of course he wont. One of the things i am most fascinated to watch, given that dynamic, which i totally agree cover himow does fox post white house. If they continue covering him, you virtually ensure that no other republican can get any left. So, that will be something. Fox, and theng of two different realities we are living in in america, it goes to the point of where we are divided. One of the big things that jumped out to me on the exit poll very early in the night, which made me think that this is going to be a closer election than maybe we thought, was the question about the handling of the coronavirus. There was a simple question on the exit poll, what is your opinion on the u. S. Efforts so far to contain the coronavirus . How do you think it is going . And it was 5050. 50 think that the efforts are going well. This is a time when, when you look at the map it is everywhere and 50 of the country thinks the efforts to contain it are going well. It is living in two different realities. One of the things i remember is one thing that people were skeptical about was joe biden raising money. You saw it in the primary. Doug he was out lapped by sanders,ke Bernie Elizabeth warren, everybody, basically. And you can go back to his race in 2008, he had a hard time raising money. One of the Big Questions was whether or not his campaign could raise money. And i think that actually ended up being like, when you step back and look at the election, he was able to compete extremely well and by the end of the race, was a far out raising the trump republican apparatus. You look at the last month of the campaign, he raised 130 million versus 43 million for donald trump. I think the other point was how that money was managed or mismanaged in the case of the Trump Campaign. By the end, they were barely able to compete on the airwaves in these states that became battlegrounds. To your point jonathan, to tell you how important tv advertising means i take it means a lot, because i am a Media Consultant but if you look at two states, the two states that ended up being very close, North Carolina and georgia, the trump denpaign actually outspent bi in North Carolina pretty substantially, almost by 20 million or 30 million. 20 million and georgia. Question as to why didnt we do better in North Carolina, i do not know what the numbers were for cunningham and cooper, but at the president ial level there was, at least on the advertising, there was a big disparity between the two campaigns. I would go back to the point of the whole issue and small joear donors by the end, biden was doing exceptionally well with the whole ability of the campaign to raise money, there wassomething deep skepticism about, i think there was a huge that was a huge component to him winning. We do not talk about the issue of small dollar donors, because it gives the democrats in this money to run tv ads. But do you guys think that at some point it is counterproductive in a place mainearolina, kentucky or , where you have an element of old conservatism . Is it counterproductive to have outofstate liberal money flowing into those estates . It becomes a bigger news story than the money itself helping the democrats, i guess is my question. I think that there will be y, many studies and a lot people will spend a lot of time looking at the just the avalanche of dollars that were thet, not just in president ial race, but in the senate race. And in and some of these house races, where there are a handful of republican candidates the guy raised like 10 million who ran against aoc. Theres like zero chance for him to win. Theresa greenfield, the Iowa Senate Race between both sides ended up being 240 million. Thats in the state of iowa, thats insane. And greenfield that, in a race like because you were doing that, what happened . In iowa, 150 million enough to running president ial campaign in one state, what do you do with all the money . You cannot buy that much television, you cannot spend that much money, right . Todd you cant. We raised a bunch of money, the campaign that came in at the very end, and i called our buyer and they were only able to spend a fraction of what we wanted to spend. I do not think that its easy to say in retrospect that the democrats did not get butr moneys worth in iowa, i do not think it is quite that simple. Volume ofhe sheer spending this cycle, and i say this is a Media Consultant, but it truly was obscene. To his point, being consultants we do not usually say that. I the point that out for the record. Todd we do not make money if you are not able to spend it. Doug i know. Jamie harrison, his campaign was running 5000 points of television in a market each week by the end. Now 1400 points a week is considered a lot, like 1600. 2000 is a lot. They were running 5000 points a week in one market. They were trafficking in, they had five or six different ads they were running. Lindsey graham was no he didnt rollover either. He raised a ton of money as well. They had so many different creatives going on, you could barely keep . Them. Keep track of them. The greenfield campaign, at one point they had a spot on about fixing potholes. I remember thinking, they have run out of things to say, they have so much money. Steve here is the thing, as we go into the georgia runoffs in january, which will decide the control of the senate. We know what will happen. The countryat in will be giving some bucks, but is that helping the candidates, but is that letting them say, they are trying to do it again, the coastal liberals trying to buy our state and impose Chuck Schumer as the Senate Leader . At some point, does the money doesg in help less than it empower the message on the other side . I would say. I would say that that is a problem of campaigns, something they would take. We have too much money. They would make the argument anyway. Steve exactly. Joel, let me ask you a question, because you talked about how the middle is what wins president ial campaigns. And there is about to be, and there has been for a long time, and our party a debate about whether we should be chasing the elusive, white nonCollege Educated voter. To my way of thinking, that could be the wrong way of thinking about it because it used to be the middleclass voter did not have an interest in a different from the africanamerican or black voter, hispanic voter or latino voter because it was about trying to improve in life versus the people who have a lot. Do you think its possible and likely that the Democratic Party will find messaging that will appeal equally to the white nonCollege Educated male and the black or latino voter who is progressive and younger . Is that possible . I think it is possible. It is part of trying to get to voters who are not part of your base. We have been successful winning in places people did not expect us to win, republicans have as well. But you have got to put together the right coalition in each race. It will be determined race by race. There is a reason why People Campaign in the cities and suburbs more than the rural areas most of the time. When they asked willy, why did you rob so many banks . He said, that is where the money is. Its not that, you have to campaign where the votes are. If you can create a path to winning in a state or carrying a state, like North Carolina, by winning the urban and suburban areas, as a democrat, they do not spend your time and effort going to the rural areas. I think that showing up matters, you have to campaign there is little bit can but every state will be different and you have to find out the right combination of voting blocs that will get you to 50 plus one to win the vote. I do not think you should be married, in any election, to anyone theory about what has happened before, because the electorate is different in each race and in each cycle. Not dramatically, but what they are thinking about. And president ial elections, you heard me say this, but i always say they are about big things, not small things. They are about the future, not the past. They are about their lives, not your life. It holds true in most elections. And when you are talking to any group of voters, if you can connect on those things, you will do well. If you fail to commit you will lose ground. Donald trump was out of touch on the number one issue, as president of the United States the biggest crisis we are facing is the pandemic, and he kept talking about rebuilding the economy and the majority of the americans thought it was more important to get the virus under control than to focus on the economy. You have to be in touch with where they are in their lives and what they are thinking about for their families and their future. I think there are some states we can do better with the rural voters. But at the end of the day, every heref us on this session would say that you must develop the calculus, whatever it takes, to windows elections. If involves reaching out to rural voters in iowa, and they fail, then i think that joni ernst was less vulnerable than people thought at the beginning, then that is on you. You have to figure out what the right model is. Not only like there is one path to victory, but you have to narrow your options so you can spend your resources smartly and strategically. Steve did you have your hand up . Is is that just on your chin . It is just on my chin, but i agree with what joel said. You have got to the thing that nancy pelosi, i think him is so masterful at is telling her advice to all of her caucus, is you have to run the race that will win in your district. People like to give nancy pelosi i think that she is getting a lot of criticism for this election, but she always gives her candidates space to run the races. I think that is what the democrat caucus has to recognize. In order for us to win some states, win districts in georgia, and virginia or start to move into some of the more southern, potentially rural districts, you know, we will have to run candidates that you cannot run in new york or run in california. There is nothing wrong with that. That is how you grow a strong party. I think that republicans should learn a lesson like that in other parts of the country, where they are not doing well, whether it is the suburbs or in the urban areas. So, i think that keeping a closed mind on, you know, the types of on what is the right ideology for the party. Look, i think the party is about a brand. Brand needs it is like the democrats need to work on their brand, republicans need to work on their brand. We need to run candidates that can do well everywhere. If that means that you run certain folks hwo have different who have different views on issues that might be the majority view in the party, ultimately to meet, as a strategist, it is about winning races, so you can have people in Congress Making decisions about policies that matter. It is not necessarily finding that person that will adhere to whatever the democratic eighth those is all these different issues. We need to find good candidates. We did that in 2018. And these are took place is to win in 2020. Betsy i just wanted to pick up on that, maybe ask doug, we have heard that the Democratic Party is over the thanksgiving table with abigail coming out and winning a very tight race in virginia, much more moderate and basically saying the defunding the Police Messaging hurts candidates like her. So there seems to be some back and forth now within the party. You are saying people have to get the message that they have to run in their own district, right . Doug like i said, i think that there is a brand that the party needs to work on and it needs to be oriented around working folks, blackandwhite, latino and it has got to be about helping working folks. I think were donald trump made gains over the last five or six years was reorienting the party around working folks. And everybody thinks it when people say working folks, they mean bluecollar and white people, but that is not what im saying, but people work in bluecollar jobs as well. You know,hink that, i get what the moderate wing of the party is saying, but you can and thesexpect aoc people running in very democratic precincts to take on what you believe is the right message. So, all i am saying is you have to find these candidates that are the perfect fits for their districts, and there needs to be an umbrella brand everyone can fall under. In some places you will see certain Different Things to win, and that makes sense, but voters need to know what the Democratic Party stands for and right now i think that joe budden has done a good job of sort of making or sort of pushing that message through. With the republicans, it has always been easier, low taxes, no regulation, strong on defense. Immigrants have a harder time communicating that. The democrats have a harder time communicating that. But i think that the tug and were in the party is actually healthy and part of what happens after an election. At the end of the day, i do not know how they can tell aoc and of those in lowlevel districts to not say certain things that people want to hear, and how aoc can turn around and tell people in moderate districts, do not talk about, or you need to talk about medicare for all and defund the police. People have to have respect for their constituents. Betsy right. Here you will have a good jillion dollars drop in a district him right . Steve i will let you close the comments. We have questions from the audience. Joel, go ahead. Joel i want to amended the last thing i said. Here is where it is important to talk t with rural voters. This is why we did not get a legislative house in the cycle, and we did in 2018 we have got to compete everywhere. We have to elect people at the school board level and up, so we can reach into those communities that feel like the party has not talked or cared about them. Because if we do not win those seats back, then we will have this world of technology, both parties have it, the extreme gerrymandering that takes place where we have politicians basically picking their voters instead of the other way around, because of these maps. And we need to get our hands on that in more places to keep things balanced or evenhanded when we can, or we will fall behind into many states and be confined more permanently to a Minority Party in those states. Steve ok, think you everybody. Youll ask some thank everybody. I will ask some questions from the comments section. If i get you a question, that is great. If not, i apologize. Jonathan, i will throw this out for anybody, but you made the observation that joe budden was the man for the moment. And i think you asked joe biden the man for the moment. And i think you asked the question if it was possible for anybody else to win this thing. But i want to ask the panel, do you think it would be possible . It a referendum on donald trump, that anybody running against him would have one . If Bernie Sanders had been nominated, would he have won . Hillary or anybody else . Anybody . I think that with Bernie Sanders, he wouldve had a hard time replicating the numbers in the suburbs, especially around philadelphia and milwaukee, that biden got. Nothing of detroit. Could he have done better with hispanics and made up for it . Potentially. But i do not know if he wouldve done better in the rural areas. I think he wouldve had a challenge around detroit, milwaukee and philadelphia getting the numbers that joe biden did. And the other candidates i think would have a similar challenge. Amynder about like, klobuchar and pete buttigieg, who wouldve been acceptable in the suburbs, but could they have gotten the base to turn out and where they have been doing better than joe biden . I do not know. Theok at the 2016 map and 2020 map, to me the story is what didnt change. So many similarities. You look at iowa, joe biden did not do much better in the eastern iowa counties along the river, where you know things well, steve. Those are catholic communities. Knights of columbus type of communities in davenport and dubuque. Didnten was like he do any better than Hillary Clinton. I do not think there is that exceptack in the map, for the margins were heated better in the suburbs, and that iswin. Betsy we wouldve gotten Bernie Sanders, then would we have gotten mike in the third party . We certainly know that that was a component when you are looking at these tight states. In 2016, you had the thirdparty vote impacting and hurting Hillary Clinton. That is a good point. Steve our sponsor may have a question about that. Ellyn i wanted to ask for a to divert from the candidates to the process going because so many of you have inside seats. We are treated with apocalyptic visions with a complete meltdown of our voting system, whether it was going to be in machinery breakdown, the poll workers, you know, suppression of the vote. Scoundrelssnafus, and despise, we were supposed to have a completely deep functional dysfunctional voting system, but it seemed to hold up. I would be interested in some of your insights of the catastrophe that didnt happen. That is a great point. All the hype about the voting process, it worked out pretty well. Arizona and georgia, as you know, they typically have a longer count because there are a handful of communities there w here people hand count. It happened at 2018 in arizona. It is a heavy mailin ballot state. That is what they do. Pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin, as we know, took some days because they wouldnt let their counties count the ballots as they came in. And they wanted to start counting them on election day. Of course it was going to take longer. But beside that, which was fairly predictable, i think it has been pretty smooth. Steve anybody else . And defendll jump in the television networks, because i think that they laid the groundwork, certainly, in letting the voters know ahead of time, this may not be decided on Election Night. And we were thorough and transparent in the votes coming in, how they were coming in, what the components of the mail in votes were. And as we followed along for the last three or four days after the election as well, really being transparent with the viewers as to how the process was playing out. I think im also ready to add poll workers to the health care workers, the Postal Service theers, all of them, secretaries of state of either party, stepping up. Betsy and becoming vilified. You know,er fire for, actually following the law. Right. Thanks. Steve joel . Joel quick comment. I think that the republican come to a point where they stopped perpetrating the notion that there was rampant voter fraud in the country. It hurt them in the selection. They paid a price for it in various places. If you asked people at the polls whether they have heard of cases or instances of voter fraud in their communities, local and state elections, and overwhelmingly people say no, because there have not been any. It is to the detriment of democracy. Both parties need to want people to vote and we should not try to destabilize it when you have no foundation for making such a case. Im not, todd, you are the republican on the call, but this is not about todd or any republican in particular, the president played that hand and it bit him in the butt. And his voters decided not to vote by mail. E point point on already mentioned, it was a huge strategic problem for republicans that all of a sudden the mailin voting was demonized. Allan, we saw this in races over the country. So than iegree more have ever had on any previous election. I was checking the longterm Weather Forecast going into election day because we put all of our eggs in that basket. And you have a nice storm in ice storm in iowa or something, all of a sudden it is a big poem because your people cannot turn out. So as far as accusations of fraud, my view is, lets see them. If they are problematic, lets investigate them. If they are illegal, ticket to the courts. On if not. Ove it is time to i think she said, lets see the evidence. That message undermines that the republicans who want won. You cannot have a system that has rampant fraud, but somehow it did not affect republicans who won. It is the idea that democrats created this elaborate conspiracy where fraud was rampant to elect joe biden, but we could not figure out how to apply it to the senate races. Its absurd. Betsy and for those people that voted for joe biden and joni ernst. Todd i made the point to a friend of mine yesterday. Explain to me how the fraud works where ballots are being manipulated to hurt donald trump, but to like have Massive Gains in state legislative races. That shit, dude. Seriously. Todd i am happy to do it. Jonathan lets do it. I want to see you. That stuff doesnt happen. [crosstalk] this sucks. Steve for those who are watching remotely, this usually happens in italy or greece somewhere, often over dinner and drinks. And we get a lot of real truth in of those settings and a lot of good friendships. We are just about out of time. I see that we have the term in joining us, chairman joining us. If there is anything they want to add or ask, we can take that, otherwise we will give everybody a minute back in advance of the next panel, which is starting in about five minutes. Six minutes, is that right . Karen, michael, did you have anything to toss in . Karen . I am glad that we won. Yay, black women. This is history making a menu chapter. And the history for black women in america. She will enter the white house that was built by slaves as the Vice President of america. Steve it is an amazing thing. Everybody, thank you for your time and thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. I do not know if you want to sign us out, but mic drop. Lets take a few minutes and we will reconvene in five minutes. Tom will orchestrate it. Steve one question, everybody stays on, right . They just stay . Everybody stays on, yes. Stay put. Good seeing you guys. Take care, everyone. See you, pal. Goodbye. Announcer this discussion hosted by New York University is taking a break but expected to return shortly. We will have coverage when they come back on cspan. Announcer this discussion is taking a break and expected to resume shortly. In the meantime, he discussion from this mornings washington journal. wee are joinedst host are joined by a staff writer who has been writing about politics for quite some time. Before the next congress, tell us what the next month looks like on the u. S. House side in particular. Uest house will come back to washington after this election to hold her leadership elections. Gave away a few too many secrets about our previous gatherings, but that is ok. A deeper look at polling, whether the posters got it wrong, whether they inflated the strength of the democratic candidates, what changes are in store for those in the polling industry, and the efforts to spread disinformation via social a permanent part of the american elections i sincerely hope not. It will be moderated by lisa benenson, the Vice President for communication and a strategy at the Brennan Center for justice the andwhere she leads digital presence of the center. Take it away. Call . Is john on the um, because he was going to be joining us to talk in particular about polling, but i do not think he is here yet, so we may have to wait for him. Fortunately, we do have a panel here that can talk about anything. So i wanted to start out by noting that in the first 20 four hours after the ballot counting started on Election Night, the media and polling classes had declared that the polling was the biggest loser. One said it was a wreck. Lots of folks were talking about embarrassed voters that were skewing the results. Another suggested that too many people were not engaged with the posters because they do not trust the results. The president claimed on Election Night that the polls had suppressed turnout among his supporters, because they were predicting a democratic blowout. Say thenalytics guys average does not matter, posters say the average is better polls. So i am curious, which is it . What do you think was really going on out there . Karen i work with cornell. This cycle we did jamie harrisons polling, some work for the congressional black caucus, and another one that i work on. We always have to be mindful that polls are a snapshot in time. I think we had the same problem this cycle as we have seen before, where we have seen some where we have to be careful how much weight we put into what polls are telling us. Work in theolling middle of the season, specifically looking for whether or not americans in battleground states thought that joe biden should select a black woman, or a white woman. We were intentional in the way that we worded those to try to get underneath unconscious biases. And they there is still an issue in how you ask the question can also skew the kinds of answers that you get. Again, i think the most important thing is to take it as a piece of information, a snapshot, but it also cannot be replaced by all the other information you would get on a campaign, in terms of what are you hearing when people are knocking on doors, what are you hearing when you are having phone conversations, what are you or looking to input are you getting or what are you seeing in terms of activity, like in early votes, who is turning out, where they turning out at and how is that matching up with the polling and what it is saying . And Something Else i will mention, i think that too much toour polling, we have distinguish with what is done inside campaigns and of the sort of public polling, because those are done differently, and they are trying to find different answers. And and certainly think that one of the issues is they are very focused on the what, but not the why. When we do not understand the why, we cannot find the trends and understand what will change over time. One thing we did in the race for jamie harrison, i believe in valuebased messaging, i learned that early on, Stacey Abrams success has been about valuebased messaging and the fact that understanding the why helps you better understand the what in terms of what is going on and frankly get better numbers. Anzo, welcome. We i glad to see you here. John, the question on the table death ofknow, is the polling prematurely predicted . John i think that there are a couple things. Not to be a defensive pollster, but it is a bullshit narrative. First, acknowledges that it is really hard. So we are always working to innovate, given the low response rates, nonresponse rates, to do better. I think that you saw, quite frankly, that we are doing better. The second thing is that, the technology in 2016 and 2020, different than 2018. Theres a trump interference that does good in the way of what is at least perceived as missed polling. The third thing, i think this is really important, what i do or what your husband does on the democratic or republican side is a much different than what the public polls are for media consumption. We spend a tremendous amount of innovation, of money, what we did to get nonCollege Educated white voters, rural voters, bilingual phone banks for latinos commit incredibly expensive and labor intensive. We are doing likely voters, etc. That is different from the dozens and dozens of shitty polls uc in the public who are not using great procedures. And they get dumped into these aggregators. And i think it is a problem. So, you cannot see our polls because they are for our campaigns, but we did not see the big margin differences that we saw in the public polling. The other thing is Everybody Needs the google. I mean, the fact is if the aggregators showed joe biden was up 1. 5 on average in North Carolina and he lost by 1. 5 in North Carolina, then that three points is not only within the margin of error, it is half of it. 3. 5 , margin of air is the spread could be seven points. I think that we learn certain things about these elections, especially for democrats, you know, karen was talking about harrison in South Carolina, i did John Bel Edwards in louisiana and roy cooper in North Carolina and if we are not a 50 , we are not going to win. If you look at where joe biden was in the aggregator polls, and you look at his results, in North Carolina he was at 49, and he got 48. 6. At 51 in michigan, he got 50. 5. There is a lesson to be learned that the margin is not as important as where your candidate is, because democrats in battleground states get what they poll. I think that becomes really important here. Lisa somebody in the questions asked something i think is interesting for us to take on as we go into the conversation, which is what evidence is there that the money being given to campaigns ensures Better Outcomes . Lets apply that to polling, why does it matter . Um, i lisa go ahead. I am looking at the chairman. He ran for office, are you just like [laughter] is a the money piece significant part and a lot of donors give because they want an outcome, but i think that john laid out why that is an improbable reality, because there are so many factors. Kare youn put your finger on, the most important one, which has always been for me the most important question you should ever give an answer to, why . Because Everything Else feeds off of the why. And one of the problems i had with the polling, john will smack me down for this, but in both the work that i did as a candidate then as the chairman at the county level, state level and nationally, ive always pressed my posters to get to that question because it is, at the end of the day, the clearest indicator of where the population of voters are. I agree with john that there is polling,crap, crappy and that is unfortunate because they gum up the works. John is doing private polling for his candidate. Those results, we are not going to seek. Unfortunately for him, x, y, z company is doing something that they are paid to put out to sort of craft a narrative and lead the public into thinking a certain thing or a certain thing or certain way about their candidate or an issue. And then when the results come in, poor john is explaining why the numbers do not add up. And they are going, because of all of the crap put into the mix. Think the first thing that the pollsters have to do is delineate where the bad actors are. We know who the good actors are in the business. But as a there has to be a greater exploration of that. I and engaged right now in conversation in maryland with some of my heart it trump folks about stuff that is not factually true. And i do not know what or how and they are like society and this stuff and i am light, that is not real. Said no, that was wrong. You have these dual realities at play and reparable Companies Like john and campaigns that are trying to navigate in this space are having a hard time doing it. And this goes it for me back to the question of why. If you can fashion polling around that, it will be harder to muck up the answers because it will reflect more of the reality than what we have seen in 18 or 20. I think going to that point, if i may get to that question in a different way, again, i appreciate that because i agree the why matters. But you brought up something important, the poll matters. It is from the Sugar Company and it says that sugar is good for you, you know, we have to be as consumers of information, we also have to be mindful of where the information is coming from. And johns point was well taken the internal polls, what youre are seeing internally, that is used that is important to democracy because it is used by campaigns and the candidate to get a feel for where the voters are and what the climate of the environment that you are running in is like. For some candidates, black women have a hard time raising money in part because polling it is used to show viability and it is not the only thing that should be used. About staceylking abrams, i worked for her early on in her gubernatorial race, when nobody was giving her money because they said the polling showed it was impossible. It cannot be done. Now way, georgia will never turn blue. God love her, she had not just polling, but other data to show why the why that she believed there was a case to be made. So part of it is the source and the intention of the polling. When you are talking about, if we invest in a 10 year plan, we can turn georgia blue, that is different from saying that we are trying to sell a narrative that says a certain narrative that we want to be able to go pollingsell, and using as a messaging tool rather than an instrument to try to understand, again, what is happening. Not to say we will not do that message testing, but to understand what resonates with people we have to understand that its important to democracy, but it is used in different ways and we have to be aware of that as well when we are looking at the results and trying to understand what they are telling us. You made me think of this, karen, that every state is not the same. Some are really difficult to poll. Florida is one of them. The Latino Community is not homogeneous. You have to use bilingual for phone banks. You probably need to do text and web to get younger africanamericans, for example. Florida is like five different states and a couple different countries, in terms of how you approach it. For some reason, michigan never really, what we would consider a good batch ofstate public polls, do not know why, but that is the case. You could say the same thing about nevada. Some states are just for again, i could give you theories, but they are easier to poll. Georgia was basically dead even and it turned out to be a dead even race. But there were some dynamics going on that i believe was a hangover from Stacey Abrams, where africanamericans wanted to settle the score about a race they feel like was taken away from them. And you do not have the volatility with whites. If you can get to your 31 , you probably will not go further, right . Where in michigan you will see the movement with noncollege whites. Every state is different and has its own quirks on how to approach it. And some states have a bigger universe of, if you want to say n other states. Lisa you have played the senior role in many races over the years, working with the Republican Party, did you see anything in the selection that surprised you, you turn you did not expect a turn you did not expect . Thank you for having me. It its always great to have a discussion after the election, something that starts the conversation for the next battle, but in a good way it brings combatants together to express ideas that are not in 140 characters. So, thank you. Talked to a lot of republicans and we thankfully vote republicans and democrats thought the public polling was off, so we were counting on having a plan for a close election. Challenge when i talk to republicans is there is frustration. I am sure that democrats are told from their first campaign, polling is the only scientific thing you will do on a campaign. And so that is really your compass. And i believe every thing john is saying to be accurate because you won, and winners get to say that, but there is a lot of of frustration with republicans because the republican results of 2012 were disappointed and we blamed the polling. We did not just focus on the republican side. We were told they did not have enough cell phones. So, in 2014 we fix that. When it was off again, worse in the battleground states, we were told we did not have the right mix. In 2016, we did not work on education. So, i think that has been a huge frustration for the republicans. And i know that there is a lot of folks saying, no, we had it right, but if you look at the decisions on spending, the Republican Party has to reconcile that we have been outspent, we have been outspent ever since barack obama got into the campaign. That was a big moment for american politics, we saw a big explosion. I think we will be north of 15 billion spent on campaigns this year. If republicans want to continue to govern as the majority party, they need to think about two things, one is so there are no blowouts, and if youre going to get out funded, you have to have better data and better looks into where the electorate will be. It is easy to say now, as a republican we had good numbers internally, but then you look at spending decisions after labor theand columbus day, um internal polling, maybe reflect on places where we could have spent more efficiently. It doesnt mean that we should throw all of our pollsters out, what it means is we need to crack this. It is frustrating on the strategy side when you feel like you cannot trust the numbers. I agree with the sentence from michael that polling has become supercheap with digital polling, it is superfast. You can get a 1000 sample for less than 50,000 and generate interest at your website. Thepeople start looking at averages and is saying that this is the truth, this is what is happening. And it is frustrating for professional polling because, you are right, you can engage sentiment, but when people say head to head this is where they do not a media poll, i think anybody serious really takes that into account. But the problem is you have seen the weaponization of polling. And that has become a problem that the classic case was the race for governor where there was polling all summer and right before the election came, po lling said it was going to be a close race, and are candidate was underfunded and lost. But there is a sense among republicans that with the polling continuing to show a bias against republicans, that it is unreliable, but also designed to donor enthusiasm first, and then voter enthusiasm second. And the real frustration is, even the republican posters have heard that is where they see this where it says the candidate is up or down 10, they get a poll that says their candidate is only down two, so they turn the dial to get closer to herd. That is incredibly frustrating. Groupknow, the blan was willing to go against the herd multiple times and they have been more right than wrong. I do not say this to be an indictment against my friends on the republican side of polling, but it is frustrating when you do see the rebooking polling from firms consistently with the herd getting consistent results, and i know how hard it is to win these campaigns. And when you have bad data it is frustrating. The republicans i have spoken to are extremely frustrated and they do not know what to do. And, um, they do not know how to combat it. The other challenge, you have these effects where you have good results and constituents do not believe you. Or on the Previous Panel there was a discussion about somebody needed to go to donald trump, get off your message, it is not working, but it is hard to do that when the polling is not complete credible. It is hard to, as a strategist, to drive a candidate in a certain direction if they do not believe what you put in front of them. So i laid out all those frustrations, but i will close on a positive note, which is when i saw joe biden in georgia, i thought, they must be crazy, why biden in georgia . I knew it was going to be a close race, but i congratulate him on keeping georgia tighter than i thought, because i thought that that would go in her favor. And our favor. And they got it right. You are throwing me one bone. Thanks, rob. Is good to be king for a minute. But you went to a point i think is interesting for this other piece of our discussion, which is looking at social media. As robing is click bait, said, we do not have a journalist here, but we have people that have spent time on tv talking about it. And patrick has thought about this. What should the media be doing differently when it comes to reporting on polls . Patrick as a person that studies this for a living, not looking at private polls, but looking at public polls and the highquality academic polls that will be coming up from the selection, i think there is good and bad things to draw from the selection. As i think all of you know, the association for Public Opinion research did a postmortem study after 2016 to figure out what went wrong with the polls, and to the big problems they found were there were not enough people without a College Education in the samples and the late deciding voters broke toward donald trump. So i do not think either of those problems were here this year. We had highquality polls in the states that were good about matching samples to the estimates of the turnout by education from cbs and other sources. And the exit polls i have looked at from various sources do not show any evidence of late deciding voters moving toward donald trump, it was pretty much 5050. I do not know if you guys saw Something Different in the private polling, but the public polling did not indicate late deciding voters for donald trump. That suggests there was a problem with voting streams. That makes sense, because the pandemic, of course, is disrupting how people vote and disrupting how they decide they are going to vote. It also disrupts who is home and answering the phone calls. So even what we think will be the highest quality live interviewing polls that we can rely upon to look at in terms of a good independent polling research, it is probably distorting who is answering the phone. Theerms of who is home, and folks working from home are College Educated professionals, for the most part. So that changes things around a little bit. The other thing is this is a very high turnout election, which becomes hard to model. On the one hand, i think that there were good efforts to try to solve the problems of 2016 that messed up state polling. 2020 election presented really tough challenges that evidently polls did not overcome. I am looking at a table comparing the polling results with the actual results, and particularly for the upper midwest, wisconsin, ohio, iowa, michigan, you know, the polls were so far off that you have to start to wonder how it happened again, and how it seemed to happen in a pattern that was so similar geographically to what we saw before. I think there are some big problems with the public polling. Simplistice is too of an answer from 2016, that you have to get that you did not get enough white uneducated voters. Our own autopsy was different. You could go back to the 2016 reweight the noncollege whites and he would not get much of a difference. There is a difference between pollsters. You never know how they do their process, but it was really also about getting the right type of nonCollege Educated voter, right . You have too many people in the Service Industry and not that of noncollege white and nonService Industry people who work with their hands, who worked in a factory, who drive a truck. That was the number one problem. Again, we do a lot of work to make sure that we are getting the right the second is, we found when you are getting rural interviews the interviews you are getting were to educated. Right . That is a problem. Youre getting that interview from the county seat and the education level is too high. The third thing is really important. How many media polls do interviews . The best you can get is doing it cell andr youre doing landline. Is there any media poll doing 60 cellndline, phones, and 10 text . Crosstab ink at a the text to web which are super republican, rob, right . You want your clients doing multiple. It is difficult to figure out what that mix is. I am telling you when you look ata crosstab you are looking pick the senate race. Mcsally, the difference in text, online, cell phone, landline, you want that. Rob no service usa was doing a lot of text to web. They found a lot of results provided. John, did you see evidence of the latebreaking moved to trump . That was the other thing i was going to point out. I cannot reveal a lot. Patrick i know. John were there states from the last poll where we saw movement . Yes. If there is a trajectory, there is a trajectory. That means there would have been continuing to be movement down. Florida is the perfect example. There are a couple of things we have to take on. This is something we have found in most polling is written by white man. One of the things i have found is that the reaction people have to the answer is because that language does not resonate with me. Im a woman and i do not talk like that or i am black and i do not speak about things like that. You tease out what is happening in a focus group and what is happening in a poll and sometimes there was a reaction to the language because it was like, i will just it whatever is i do not know what that means. Or in places where africanamerican and latino voters would say they intend to vote. They admitted in a different section they were not sure how it worked. This just to say as our country becomes more diverse in our electorate is more diverse, we also have to be bring in a lot of different thoughts about how we are asking questions. What questions we are asking. I will give you another example. A lot of polls were asking questions in the deep state about a white woman versus a black woman. Nobody is going to say they do not think a black woman as possible. Theyre not good to answer that way. I cannot divulge how we did it, but you have to give the person a little bit of cultural distance from that question because you do not want to answer that question and say, i am not racist. Im not saying a black woman could not be Vice President. You are not necessarily going to get the true answer if you are not asking a little bit of a different way. You know the math far better than i do. What i know is messaging and understanding the why and it 2016, me as an example in one of the things we found out after was that when people were saying they were worried about their future they were not just talking about the economy. They were talking about what trump was talking about witches those people are taking their jobs. Taking their jobs because of affirmative action. Are you worried about the future of the economy . You are only going to get a number. You do not get what is going to impact voting behavior. Rob i do not necessarily want to get into the minutia, but i will share what i did. It really gets to the why on how you ask the question. Im sitting Lieutenant Governor of maryland. People look at federal versus state races very differently. You need to know the difference between summary running for federal Office Versus state office. That is the first thing. Set id my pollsters and had two questions. This ties into the bradley race in california and the Virginia Governor race a few years before. Was, woulduestion you vote for an africanamerican for United States senate . The answer came back 74 yes. The second question was would your neighbor vote for an africanamerican for the United States senate . [laughter] that came back 43 yes. I knew where i stood. I could not get you would you vote for a black man . Why will you not vote for a black man . I knew that i could not get into that. That was not a conversation starter. The way you ask the questions as pollsters is important and to be quite frank, you have got to have people in the room who think like that to ask the question. You cannot have a bunch of men i dont care if they are white, black, or otherwise asking questions about women. You cannot have a bunch of women asking questions about men. You have to get the right mix in the room in formatting the questions so that you can get as close as you can to the right answers when you go out into the public and you are trying to do is cross of players. Whiteesbian, wha educated, uneducated, suburban, and putting those together we can get closer to how an electorate feels on any topic at any time. Going back to how we started the conversation, you are revealing more of the why. I wanted to touch on the question one listener asked. You will have the answers to this as well. She asked about given the money and power polling organizations have has there ever been an instance where the organization intentionally gave erroneous information in an attempt to manipulate the outcome . Let me start this by saying [laughter] i do think this is important. Pollsters who are running campaigns have to get to the right answers. It is not like they are going to push away the bad information. They need to know, as michael noted, the real answers so they can help candidates. Do you want to take this one and then i will move onto Something Else . I think karen made a point it isou get a poll a little different. I think it is tricky. People called me this year and said, hey, i think it should be this or that. What do you think . I think this number is too high, too low, and it is not they are saying i want to give the world of my campaign or my clients that intel, it is just tough. In 30 secondsed the challenge of michigan polling or getting an accurate tell. I think the independent cell was corrupted the past year in public polling because of economics. It is expensive to find the right mix of independence and set up some algorithm internet loose. And turn it loose. Quest to bes in the right use you see things like herding or weighted numbers because they are trying to get it right and they are afraid something came back that was inaccurate. Ive never talked to a pollster who said, man, i regret giving that answer. I think they trying to the best they can. Listen, with your client you want to be as frank as possible. One of my oldest clients loves to tell the story he introduces me as the guy who told him he was going to lose. That is where you have to be to make good decisions. I think rob pointed to it earlier. Makeng is also helping resources which is really important. Again, media firms are doing polling to be nostradamus. Right . We are doing polling for message development. Yes, we want to get it right. Rob brought up the cunningham race which is really important. For my entire career, i have done a lot of blue dog, southern polling, i live in montgomery, alabama. Not saying i understand it much better, but heres what i have learned. If you are looking at a bunch of North Carolina data in october, you might see cunningham up by a couple of points. The media is saying that is a lead. He is going to win. No. If you are a seasoned pollster you know that of a democrat in North Carolina is not a 50 , youre going to lose. That is what we believe, right . You do not get any points for that but that is what we are telling clients because we want to be honest with our analysis. That is never going to be the spin of a media poll in North Carolina on tilliscunningham. End of story. Olled. What he p it was not that the poll was off, it was how you interpret that. Let us talk about social media and the role it plays. There have been and are currently claims being made there was a blue wave and that depress turnout. They were much more serious things in our social media over the last six months. U. S. Intelligence officials warned us because of the pandemic it would probably take some days for the results of the president ial election to emerge and foreign adversaries might spread false information. At the same time conservative media, breitbart and a constellation of influencers, have been part of a disinformation powerhouse spreading that information. Today in realtime President Trumps campaign is going to be doing and messaging blitz that is unsupported by evidence that the second term is being stolen from him through corrupt counts in battleground states. Do with the social media that has the power to make these claims . We know that facebook and twitter, late in the game, took aggressive steps to mislabel information. More americans than ever are getting news on social media. What do we do, in a democracy, to try and to make democracy work when we are faced with this flood of misinformation . Can i say one thing . Us that think many of there was going to be a blue wave. I thought that was a media narrative. [laughter] ptsd from 2016my and 2018, but i did not think there was going to be a blue wave. I think the reality is we had some tough house races and it looked good. I think the bigger story is the voting wave we got, frankly. In the middle of a pandemic, americans cannot devote and voted by mail in Record Numbers. How do we make it easier for people to vote Going Forward so that we get that kind of turnout again and again and again . That being said i think your question about social media is very troubling. I think i read somewhere at this point trump has 87 million followers and he tweets Something Like 1000 times a week or something. Each tweet is retweeted 18,000 times. Think on order of magnitude the universe, in terms of controlling access to information, and i have seen some research that says followers get their information from that. They do not look at outside sources. Andink it is very troubling it would be good to see organizations take some steps late in the game as you pointed out, but i think we are going to need i hate to say the r word but that regulation or measures in place. These platforms now provide information that people make life decisions based on. I think there is a real responsibility to try and assure the information they are getting is accurate. The same you would expect when you call a nurse at the hospital for medical advice. You expect if my daughters temperature is at this point, should i bring her in . You should have some way of knowing again, we have to be discriminate consumers, but things that are flat out not true like the lizard people and qanon. Laughs]ther there has to be a line somewhere. I think the social media piece relative to campaigns, policymaking, polling, all of the various pieces that make up our political system and more broadly speaking culturally is a blessing, a curse, and a cudgel. It is a blessing and that more of our citizens are engaging. They are getting out there and expressing opinions that were kind of reserved for the end of the bar conversation at 2 00 a. M. It is expressed at 2 00 p. M. Over and over again. The fact is there is greater engagement and better conversation in some sense that people are having. They are kind of broadening their horizons in that standpoint. It is a curse and how narrow those horizons can often become. Ourselves into this Tribal Community in which venue is or platforms like facebook become the home base for a group of us who kind of all think alike and feel alike and sound like, talk alike, walk alike. There is this environment in which learning stops. Information gets stunted. Germinate in a way that create the kind of crazy that we have seen play out conspiracy theories have equal relevance as the news of the day. Legitimate media how people see political orientation. Having to battle in this space to get correct information in front of the country which is being buffeted by Incorrect Information and that leads to the cudgel. Thing that beats the crap out of people, politicians, candidates, political parties, and beats them back so badly they find themselves frozen in place. That affects how policy is actually made. When you are looking over your shoulder and saying, i cannot get out here and stand with my republican colleague, or my democratic colleague, to advance this issue because they are all these people on social media with his cudgel that are ready to beat the mess out of me if i do. In those rare instances where it works, and i could tell you for example, on the criminal Justice Reform and other issues like that, the opportunity zones the background work to smooth out the edges with the basis so this site does not get excited and that side does not get excited because it may skew more this way or that way, while that may be good it also tells you a lot about the power of social used byat is being various constituencies as a cudgel to beat down a lot of the progress and opportunity for civic minded leaders to get into that space and govern. It is going to be a challenge for Vice President , now president elect, biden. Trumpd of a president with a twitter account it is former President Trump with a twitter account. All of those followers being stoked. After it wase did ms. Proven. There are still people who believe president obama was born someplace other than the United States. That is the power of it. Thean i add, michael, twitter account is the tip of the iceberg. When you are in a president ial campaign you see a lot of things you do not want to see which is disinformation by race and ethnicity coming from trump and his allies. This is not like the water to pinocchios you see in the washington post. This is bad, bad stuff made up on a personal level etc. See patrick knows this a small amount of it. Ethnicifferent for every race. App is a place where misinformation has been spread about latinos. I believe it is an epidemic. I do not know what you do about it. I do not know if you can do anything about it, but if you see the reports that some of these firms put out on disinformation, it is really distressing. Not,dibly distressing and oh, bidens tax policy. No. Right. It is bad personal stuff. The disinformation war room that was put together by the womans organization, particularly to focus on the attacks that we knew would come on whoever the woman vp would andcertainly Kamala Harris, i cannot even repeat some of the things that people would say. You would never what your child to hear or see such a thing. It was so disgusting. As john said it is going to continue. It is living in an environment i do not know how you stop it. Distressing and the best way, in some ways, to stop it was ignore it. It is much deeper. There is a whole misinformation chain that goes from fox news street to right wing sites, fringe sites, that is really distressing. Rob, can i ask you a question . In listening to this and thinking about the power of social media, what impact does this have . Reaches of social media are not necessarily representative of the Republican Party. But what impact does this have on a post trump Republican Party . Is there no post trump Republican Party because of the social media issue . I mean you have got to be a little careful here. Sayre hearing what i would is the centerleft critique of social media. I could make the same critique on the right side. The misinformation, whether it comes from cbs, nbc, and trickles down or from a bot with 12 followers, you see it in a bipartisan way. Times you will be on twitter or social media sites and mob has decided every site is dominated by users that they have decided something to be fact. Something that was a person who raised their hand and said, i disagree, is discounted, destroyed, and later turned out to be right. It is frustrating to see some of that as a republican. We talked to republicans and that is a big concern. Private Companies Act is public utilities. It is not like a hospital. In the last week, they are censoring and throttling the president of United States, throttling republican senators. It begs the question what is free speech and who has a right to say, in a private company, making decisions . It is their property and they can do what they want. That said, i think you are going to see the rise of tribal social media. Is that good, is that bad, i do not know. Im kind of in the air. I have a huge family and friends around the country. The discussion on both sides are not super helpful and not super factbased, but i get the texts , and i think it is corrosive. In some ways it is great people are engaged in thinking of the country and who they believe. But i think it is really hard because people get so passionate about it. I think if they felt comfortable with their news source, be it left or right or center, they would not be searching for the truth. I think that is something we have to think about. The one thing that is kind of freaked me out the last five years is how much i have learned about peoples personal opinions who are journalists. I do not know. I guess they have a right to free speech as well, but when people hire us they know my biases regarding politics and they choose to hire for not. I do not know if that is a good thing for democracy or journalism. Easy for critics to say, heres a tweet from one year ago when somebody said something that was personal therefore we can discount their body of work and story. I do not know. Advocacy andetween education getting blurred and that scares me. I think it is critical, i think it is important, i think we need it. Were not getting rid of it. I do not really know how to fix it, but i do feel like you are starting to see some groups say, let us take a ban or fast on social media. Im not sure if that is ever going to happen, but im sure we all have that friend that just needs to get off twitter and walk outside. It is driving yourself crazy. I will stop there. But it is a challenge. With democrats that live in my become alabama so i get that. [laughter] do we need a fairness doctrine for social media . Is that possible . I think the market corrects itself. Radios on tv it did on and you have to believe in the free market. I agree. Somebody who looks at the National Media and has the sense that it is liberal is right. [laughter] point,es to robs journalists often identifies liberal. Even though most journalists do a great job of maintaining neutral in the reporting and presenting the news, there is the sense that the establishment, with regard to media and academia, is for liberals. The said that is presenting the facts is also the side that is stuck with liberals. I think that is one of the reasons social media has such appeal to anybody who feels disenchanted or disengaged on the national conversation. It has a kind of rhetoric and that feelsd prose really out of touch. That, i think, is one of the big currents in American Culture right now. Patrick made the point excellently as academics should, right . It goes to the why. Why . Why conservatives found their first love in talk radio. Why have they found their home now in the space of social media . No one really cares the answer to the why. When everybody was fawning over uncle walter and Walter Cronkite and all the media giants in the 1960s were telling us about the war in vietnam and the economy and the social change that was hitting the land, we did not hear our voices in the conversation. We were not part of that narrative. Nobody ever bothered to ask a conservative in the 1960s. How do you feel about the war or how do you feel about johnsons explosion of Government Programs known as the Great Society . It is going to cost us billions and billions of dollars. Nobody bothered to ask them. At a certain point you just kind of go, ok, i will just check out. I do not care. You see the system is tilted against you. This is a 50yearold story from the dawn of the media age, where it was decided by somebody that that part of the population would not have anything to contribute or have anything to say or not going to spend the time or money putting that voice in the narrative. You want to understand why there was a Rush Limbaugh . Because he took the risk, im going to take these three hours every day on this network and talk about the things that matter to us. Starting my political listeningthe 1980s to Rush Limbaugh, because i felt this was the place where i had some residents. What Ronald Reagans was talking about what Ronald Reagan was talking about, he was contextualizing it into the economy and into social constructs, into politics. Social medias the next elevation of the for a lot of conservatives that for a lot of conservatives, because in many cases, they dont see or hear their voices represented in the media. We try to have these discussions. The last four years have been about personality more than policy. Okay . What i am excited about in the is that when you come up with crazy, im going to talk going to have a debate about these policy ideas on these platforms. More and more, conservatives and centerright citizens out there feel these networks and these platforms are giving equal time and share to their point of view, i think you will see less, point. S to orobs to robs point. In 2016, a bunch of obama folks got together and started crooked media. Groups,jority and other representing more people of color, ran really powerful get out the vote campaigns. Look at what Stacey Abrams did. Favreaualking to john and others, they very much told a counter, we need to fox news, but its going to be this. That is what they created. Corrective. As maybe this was providing more opportunity. You have a notion on this . Picking up the practical reality for anyone who is trying to reach audiences, whether it is a campaign or a candidate, or selling a product, media is so fractured in the way we get our diverse,on, it is so it is as much about understanding who is using what source, and how do you trust which source youre getting it from . It, if i cant check in at myself that being said, political to us as consultants. Us ofs election reminded nothing, its that we are a diverse country, whether we like it or not,. Newal media does provide channels and ways for people to fight each other and communicate with each other over the issues they care about. We all see ourselves reflected in mainstream media. We started with misinformation, disinformation. But as a real problem, big part of the way we solve that is understanding how people social media and what their expectations about what they are going to get from social media is. Part of the goal was to teach people how to not be part of problem, be part of the solution. Do not share disinformation and misinformation. Do not share something even if you think it is funny, because it is not. Someone who does not get that it is funny sees it. Part of it is about thesetanding, a, platforms provide content for more diverse audiences. Thee are going to let market decide, then weve got to give people the tools to be responsible consumers. There can be dangerous consequences to what happens on social media. We all have to take responsibility for that. Host this is where we get to take some questions from obvious members from audience members and from some of our fellow panelists, in particular one who i must now turn to. I want to make a quick comment, this notion of liberal media. The016 on a friday night, Hollywood Tape of donald trump came out talking about grabbing women by their genitals, on friday. Theres a study of media covers throughout the Campaign Coverage throughout the campaign. The media covered hillary 31 ratioemails at a over the access Hollywood Tape. If there was a liberal bias, it would have surfaced in the final greats, and you had footage, film, commentary, and it didnt happen. We all need to be careful about that. Patrick, should the media stop reporting on these horserace numbers in a po ll when it comes to learning what is going on in a race . Should the media stop reporting it and report the other rich data in the polls . Guest i definitely agree with you. We put too much emphasis on recording the horserace numbers, as we get more and more data points and sophistication and how the data points are put together. Theres been far too much emphasis put on it. Thing that is interesting i think this is particularly true in 2020 you lose any conversation about what kinds of policies americans want to solve problems. This is what most people call a valence focused election. America faces a whole series of challenges that require intense policy solutions that are going to require consensus for us to move forward. I dont think this campaign moved us much along in that way. I would agree that the conversation would improve if we move more toward what americans think about the cost of solutions to climate change, solving the deficit, reducing income inequality. Theres a lot of difficult choices we have to make as a country. Theres not a good sense,if theres a consensus , about what it is. Ive got a question from one of our listeners on exit polling. How do you assess the validity of excess polling considering the high number of mailin ballots . If they remain as a primary mode of voting, how do you think excess polling will adapt . Guest theres always been a problem with excess polling. Its not just people standing, waiting for people to come out of the polls. They are now doing large samples of phone interviews. They are actually using polling echniques in the exit polls equation. What we often find is,once an election happens , you have to wait a certain time for what we call the voter file to be appended, and you do an analysis of who actually voted, you are going to see gaps between what you see in the exit polls and what you see by the rich Data Analysis that you get from just knowing exactly who voted on the file demographically, geographically, etc. I always really caution people to take the exit polls with a grain of salt. You can Say Something right now. You can see it with the suburban voters. And you can see it right now. You can see it with the suburban voters. Its not perfect. As perfect, and. T really is not john is right. Polls are not designed to tell us who won. They are designed to tell us and why. Y who won year, particularly difficult, because we are seeing such a huge change in the margin on Election Night and what ultimately will be the margin once the votes are all counted. I would take all the exit poll data when the next or grain of salt. At the same time, we are already seeing evidence the exit polls were picking up things we are not seeing in the geographic vote. Like the movement of trump was latinos. It is across the board with mexican americans, venezuelan americans in florida. I just want to reiterate, cycles to make sure they capture people who are not voting on election day. I have maybe a slightly different take on exit polls. Im not a fan. Im sorry. I think they are disruptive. I think they are somewhat disingenuous, in terms of what ultimately happens. They feed a narrative sometimes that can come back to bite you in the behind. It isthey are there, stellar, because you dont have a result. And everybody is rushing at 8 00 to Start Talking about the exit poll numbers as quickly as they can, while they would for results. Even before that, some start early and pushing out some exit polling numbers. Theres another part of the country that is still voting at 8 00. And so, when you start dropping mix,f this crap into the , in theimpacting a vote twohour, threehour time zone behind you. Think theres got to be a lot of tempering of all of this data, and pushing it out, and trying to configure it, be the first to claim what happened and with the results mean. And what the results mean. D that the results across the country unfolded the way they need to. Weekend, a day or two later, some exit polling analysis to get to where we started this conversation around why voters chose who they chose. I dont need to know at 6 30 in the evening why trump voters said what they said on the way out of the polls. Is an out in california is still voting. That is not going to tell me ultimately what voters decided to do and why. I think watching nonstop election, ifter the think this first election where we saw this incredibly broad use of mailin ballots, which may well suggest a real turn to this but everybody counts differently. It took days for the networks and for everybody who was talking about this to understand that just because they started counting those ballots early in arizona did not mean they were doing it every place else. It set a narrative that i think was very simple for some and say, well, it went to the early narrative. Somehow, mailin balloting was fraudulent. Its been studied endlessly. Tv,ink those who are on like all of you, next time around, it will be much easier for people to understand what it means when mailin ballots are counted and how that is different in different states. Have another question i wanted to ask. Is there a noticeable heisenberg effect . Where people shift their votes on the basis of public polling . Ive seen it suggested that in some red states, biden voters split their ticket and voted for Gop Senate Candidates after polling indicated there might be a democratic trifecta. I believe in it. That is part of what joel was getting at. The fact that theres a media narrative about the headtohead horserace. Overblown, lets just agree on that. We see thisple do, in focus groups, go into a checks and balances mindframe sometimes. Helpnk it potentially did down ballot republicans. Dont think theres any way to really get a diagnostic on it. But i think it is a reasonable thing. It can happen in the reverse. Is it bad for democracy . I think it really happens. If people want to balance government and learn something from bowls that one thing is very likely to happen, one can argue it is good for democracy for people to be able to make a rational decision based upon this. An insider question for you. Difference in the voters by methodology . No doubt about it. If youre answering a landline, you are going to be older. You are more likely to be caucasian. If you are looking just for an example of generic ballot, its going to be more conservative, more republican. If youre answering by cell phone, you are more likely to be not a ton democratic, because we are now getting 65 on cell. But if you are looking at panels, textile web, often, text to web, if you are doing a headtohead on your phone, if you are going to do peertopeer, or you are going to do an online version, where givingt have a phone, you a certain social pressure, we find those to be more conservative and republican, as well. I think they are important. I think we capture voters we would not capture by just doing one mode. So, this is a big, tough question. People on each side of our political divide come to a consensus on what is true verse is not true versus not true . Any ideas . At the end of the day, it is about our leaders kind of agreeing on that. That duringcertain the biden administration, there will be a lot of republican standing up quickly to say that is not true. And i am sure there could have been more, during the Trump Administration. In my view, a lot of the behaviors we are seeing being played out politically, in my estimation, i may be on this island by myself, but i believe from my own experience being out across the country, what i saw and felt and came to learn as National Chairman in the 20092010 cycle will be the emergence of key parties and all of those elements, is that the leadership across party lines matters, and a lot of people take their cues off of that. I can tell you, i will use a mathsituation situation as an example, mask situation as an example. If that was reinforced across the aisle by the president , chuck shumer, you would not have backlash. The ongoing conversation and the tenor and tone of that is going to be set by national leaders. We have been built that way as a country over 244 years. When our leaders remain silent, or they are off tone with the american people, that is going to get filled in by a platform called social media. They will replace those voices absent in the public space that should be giving affirmation or condemnation, support or no support to these big public narratives. That . Body else on i will jump in. Messyk, in a weird, american way, we just had an election, with record participation, record votes. And we did get to the truth. , ourall the disinformation goal was to fully engage in the electorate with stark choices put in front of them. Maybe, it was not done the way we would like to have had it done. Maybe are said is that show the more closed minded you become when youre older, maybe it is not perfect, but maybe in all e kind of, as consumers, karen said she keeps up on twitter, but until she verifies it and rejects it, she is suspicious. I think we have a lot of consumers. The challenge we have not talked bots on the rise of twitter as a dangerous thing. It creates a sense of something that may not exist. I found myself going to a lot of data scientists tweets, trying to figure out if they were verifying what they were saying. To do that. L ought it takes time. I am amazed at the rise of Rush Limbaugh, joe rogan. Inre are many that invest the truth and take the time to say it. You have to believe, we see the bad stuff, but theres a lot of good going into this. Schoolsot of friends in i have a lot of friends in schools that voted, got engaged, etc. They said, i will stand up and voice my support for this or that. It shows is the dynamic marketplace. It is an ugly, painful, looseleaf kind of marketplace, but it does not change the fact that it works in a very dynamic way, but it does work. Decide. Ve to be able to saw incerned that, as we 2016, black and brown voters were targeted as the subjects of disinformation campaigns. One of our friends happened to be on a radio show the week before the election. Saying, if joe biden wins, you are going to etc. Late lgbtq, it was clearly when bush that was coming from a bot, or somewhere where it was not true. When i have done focus group work, we dont really talk like that, but that is what you see. I think we have to be a little careful on that. Be alternative facts. We started the Trump Administration with a discussion about alternative facts, how many people actually attended the inauguration ceremony. Theres a number of people who attended the inauguration ceremony, period. Do have to agree with michael to some degree, that our leadership ought to take some response ability. We have to have some agreedupon, actual facts. The sun is shining, that is an actual fact, that is not my opinion. That is not just my truth. That is a fact. Within that, we can accept that there is subjective truth about how we see that, and certainly there is a diverse nation. How joe rogans is what the truth is is going to be different than rachel maddow. But there has to be we have to at least have a place where we can say, here is, like a High School Science class, here is the fact, then you work the problem around the fact. We may have some subjective truth about how we see the fact, but can we at least get back to agreeing on that facts are not subjective . There has to be some side effects that we can all agree on and start from. I want to thank you all. I wish we were seeing each other in person. Rob, it looks like a jack dorsey beard. 97 for the other guys. Ive got to hide. We are nice. Anyway, thank you all for participating today. Let me turn this over now. Let me add my thanks to all of the panelists, for your brilliance moderating. I also want to thank cspan for covering these two days. I hope we will see you back tomorrow at 12 30 for two more panels. The future of the Democratic Party and the future of the Republican Party. Thanks to the panelists for their insight and wisdom. And to the panelists, i will see you in 15 minutes. Thanks. [laughter] edna, everybody good night, everybody. Have a wonderful evening. Follow the one to election results. Ballots of power in congress, demand from the the dates and about election process. President trump has announced that hell be replacing mark sper tweeting earlier the races undecided re in georgia, both heading to a january runoff. Ossoff because e northeast received 50 of the vote. Runoff is between Kelly Leffler and his onpoint en. Are still being counted in North Carolina wherein come bent tomtor